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	<title>Joel&#039;s Rant</title>
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	<link>http://www.joelsrant.com</link>
	<description>A Conservative Blog</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:08:56 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>4 Unlucky Marines</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2012/01/16/4-unlucky-marines/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2012/01/16/4-unlucky-marines/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:08:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Political]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=541</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I’ve never been in a combat zone and I’ve never been in the military.  I avoided that in the 60’s when I was lucky enough, like many other men my age, to be safely ensconced in school.  Now, in my later years, I’m sorry I didn’t serve but I understand those words ring hollow today [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve never been in a combat zone and I’ve never been in the military.  I avoided that in the 60’s when I was lucky enough, like many other men my age, to be safely ensconced in school.  Now, in my later years, I’m sorry I didn’t serve but I understand those words ring hollow today when I’m here in the present and some of my college classmates are remembered when I visit their names engraved in a wall.  </span></span></p>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand war.  I certainly do, as do most thoughtful, thinking people, who similarly never served.  According to that crackpot, Ron Paul, I’d be unqualified to be the president because I didn’t serve.  Some of our greatest wartime presidents, FDR and Lincoln come to mind, didn’t serve either.  Neither did James Madison and James K. Polk, presidents during 2 of our 5 “declared” wars.  And neither did, of course, the greatest president in my lifetime, Ronald Reagan.  But Ron Paul’s an ass, so who of consequence really cares what he thinks?  </span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;">This brings me to my point.  By now you know that 4 US Marines were videotaped urinating on some dead Taliban bodies. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called it &#8220;deplorable&#8221; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she felt &#8220;total dismay&#8221; after hearing the story.  There are several investigations underway by the Navy and the Marine Corps and others to see how such a terrible thing could happen.  I suppose there’s no way such a “travesty” could take place in our armed forces, during a period of war mind you, and our political class merely looking the other way, or letting it slide.  No, that could not be possible.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Here’s my take on this story. I’m glad those 4 Marines did what they did.  I’m just sorry they didn’t set those dead barbarian freak bodies on fire or desecrate them in some other way.  I’m just sorry they didn’t cut off their freak barbarian heads and kick them around like soccer balls and then fling them into a river.  They deserved to be desecrated and defiled.  Our soldiers are warriors, sent to a foreign battlefield to kill, conquer and vanquish the enemy. And they should be allowed to do so with speed and dispatch, the same way we fought our war in WWII. War is freaking war and people die and that&#8217;s what’s supposed to happen, for crying out loud.  </span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;">And how are our warriors supposed to psychologically handle that situation, the war situation, the same one Ron Paul claims I’m not supposed to understand because I’ve never been sent to fight.  How are they supposed to react after being in battle, with their very lives in constant danger?  Our vaunted leaders like Panetta and Clinton think our warriors should go out and kill the people who are trying to kill them first, and then when they&#8217;re finished killing the bad people, to apparently just shrug that off, like they would at the Pentagon or the State Department, and go back to nation building and maybe get some coffee.  Are they serious?  How can our warriors be expected to do merely that.  It&#8217;s not what reasonable people would do.  How did our warriors of WWII handle that and how did they regard those they had to kill?  With anger?  With depravity?  With worse?  Maybe. Probably.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;">And that’s as it should be, no?  When you put people, like our warriors, in harm’s way, we need to not be offended when they vent their rage and anger. That venting is exactly what freaking keeps them human beings, for crying out loud.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: small;">Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, is well known for his quote that “War is hell.”  But that’s not his best quote.  His best quote would be “War is cruelty.  There is no use trying to reform it.  The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”  Now ain’t that the truth?</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Our problem is that we are, through our sanctimonious leaders and the fifth-column mainstream media, trying indeed to reform it into something not quite so bad.  We now demand no collateral damage, no innocent’s being killed, no severity, only proportionality, defenseless rules of engagement that expose our own troops to danger and on and on.  And now we’re at a point where we have to fight a weak and insignificant-in-numbers enemy for a decade or more and still we’re not done.  </span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I say no.  We need to fight this war, and any war, with ferocity and focus until we have slaughtered our enemies and vanquished them from the field of battle, even if that battlefield is in a village or even a hospital.  Because that’s how wars are fought.  Because the crueler it is the sooner it will be over.  And yes, there will be dead people, and maybe lots of them.<br />
</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And if we’re not going to fight like that, then let’s not send our precious warriors to fight at all.</span></span></p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p></div>
</div>
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		<title>Newt’s Baggage</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2012/01/02/newt%e2%80%99s-baggage/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2012/01/02/newt%e2%80%99s-baggage/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:27:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[cap & trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[health care]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Political]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=538</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Negative campaigns work. People claim they want to hear a positive message, they want to hear optimism, they want to hear genuine solutions, but isn’t that really a bunch of bullcrap?  Once the negative ads hit the airwaves, all they want to acknowledge is the bad stuff, or what’s being purported to be bad stuff. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Negative campaigns work.<br />
People claim they want to hear a positive message, they want to hear<br />
optimism, they want to hear genuine solutions, but isn’t that really a bunch of<br />
bullcrap?  Once the negative ads hit the<br />
airwaves, all they want to acknowledge is the bad stuff, or what’s being<br />
purported to be bad stuff.</p>
<p>Too many people can’t reconcile “good stuff” versus “bad<br />
stuff”, and so they just go with the bad stuff.<br />
It’s easier to believe bad stuff.<br />
It’s the same kind of thinking that makes it far easier to be a liberal<br />
than a conservative.  Conservatives are thoughtful;<br />
liberals are emotional.  In a contest<br />
between thoughtful and emotional, emotional wins almost all the time.  Same with good stuff and bad stuff; bad stuff<br />
goes down easier and doesn’t take much sorting and thinking.  It’s easier to trick people with bad<br />
stuff.  That’s why going negative is more<br />
successful than going positive.  Barack<br />
Obama’s counting on that human nature for his reelection strategy.</p>
<p>Too many Iowans’ seem to be buying into the easier to<br />
swallow bad stuff.  They should be<br />
embarrassed because now we can officially dismiss Iowa as a place where genuine<br />
thought takes place.  Apparently it<br />
doesn’t.</p>
<p>Newt’s obviously been the focus of a negative campaign;<br />
promulgated by people who have either no record of their own, or a lesser<br />
record than Newt’s, to run on.  But a<br />
smart and outspoken guy, like Newt, who’s been in political office or in the<br />
public arena for over 30 years, makes an easy target.  A guy who’s voted on about 8,000<br />
congressional bills, testified numerous times before Congress, written hundreds<br />
of position papers, written 24 books and given thousands of speeches has got a<br />
huge paper trail to glean “bad stuff” from.<br />
No other candidate in the race comes even close to the record of<br />
involvement and public life that Newt commands.<br />
And so those, with no record of accomplishment of their own, are trying<br />
to take Newt out by attacking his record.</p>
<p>So what are the “bad stuff” people are clearly responding to<br />
and what’s the truth.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Newt’s First Wife</span></p>
<p>First of all, Newt’s first wife is still alive and<br />
well.  According to the urban legend, she<br />
should have been dead since 1980 when Newt supposedly demanded a divorce while<br />
she was literally on her death bed.  The<br />
truth is that it was she who had sought the divorce and that action was already<br />
underway when she had a benign tumor removed.<br />
Go figure!</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Freddie Mac</span></p>
<p>Newt was paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac for, what his<br />
opponents claim, was nefarious lobbying efforts.  But let’s put this into some<br />
perspective.  That $1.6 million was paid<br />
not to Newt, but rather to The Gingrich Group, a Washington consulting firm,<br />
one of hundreds of others doing legitimate business in the nation’s<br />
capital.  That seemingly huge fee was<br />
paid out not in one lump sum, as his opponents would have you believe, but<br />
rather in monthly “retainer” installments from 1999 through 2007, or about<br />
$20,000 per month, which interestingly enough is about the “going rate” for<br />
those kinds of services in Washington.<br />
The Gingrich Group also is comprised of 3 separate offices, in<br />
Washington, Atlanta and St. Louis and has a staff, and pays rent and utilities,<br />
buys equipment and business products and services, pays for travel and does all<br />
the other things normal to a business of that size and nature.  What this means is that the $1.6 million paid<br />
by Freddie did not end up exclusively in Newt’s wallet.  It was business income, along with other<br />
income, from other consulting work performed, and went in the coffers of The<br />
Gingrich Group.</p>
<p>It should also be remembered that Newt was a private citizen<br />
during this time, unlike Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and others driving Freddie<br />
Mac.  He was allowed to make a living.  Did he lobby Congress?  I’m not sure myself, but Newt claims he<br />
didn’t, his contract with Freddie said he wouldn’t, and I’m certain if he did,<br />
those congress people who were lobbied would have come forward already if he<br />
did, no?</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">House Ethics</span></p>
<p>The story goes that Newt was fined $300,000 by the House<br />
ethics committee because he used a book deal to circumvent campaign-finance laws while he was<br />
Speaker.  Compared to Charlie Rangel,<br />
Maxine Waters, Diane Feinstein, and others, a book deal sounds almost quaint,<br />
but even that is bullcrap.  There was<br />
certainly a political effort among Democrats on the committee, as well as<br />
Republicans not fond of Newt’s leadership style, who wanted him out.  Under pressure, Newt acquiesced and paid for<br />
the cost of the “investigation”, not a $300,000 fine.  As it turns out, the ethics committee<br />
initially investigated 83 so-called violations of which they dismissed all<br />
except for one.  A year later, the IRS<br />
dismissed even that one and claimed no conflict ever existed.</p>
<p>On a<br />
Bench With Nancy Pelosi</p>
<p>The 31 second commercial Newt participated in with Nancy<br />
Pelosi, in April 2008, rates as the worst time spent in his life.  But all Newt says in that commercial is that<br />
he’s concerned about the future and that solutions need to be found.  All the details are left to the<br />
imagination.  Newt claims what he was trying<br />
to do was make sure that whatever action Congress decided, and at the time<br />
you’ll recall the super majority Democrat House and Senate was hell-bent on cap<br />
&amp; trade action, that conservatives had a voice crafting that action.</p>
<p>If that sounds stupid and self-serving, compare that 31<br />
second fluff piece with the over 1 hour of direct and detailed testimony Newt<br />
gave, by himself, before the Waxman-Markey Environment Committee, in April 2009,<br />
and how combative that was and where precisely Newt was coming from, and where<br />
Waxman and Markey were coming from.  Even<br />
if you hate Newt’s guts, after viewing that testimony you know he was talking<br />
about small, measured steps, all done without government intrusion or taxpayer<br />
funding.  You’ll note the extreme respect<br />
Newt has for private industry and the free market and how leaving this issue to<br />
the capitalists will solve this climate problem, if there even is a climate<br />
problem.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzDutBRMsXw">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzDutBRMsXw</a></p>
<p>Characterizing Newt as some sort of climate complicit cap<br />
&amp; trader is dishonest in the extreme.<br />
By the way, what are Mitt Romney’s thoughts on this exact issue?  What are Ron Paul’s?</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Mandatory Health Care</span></p>
<p>Newt has been a deep thinker about health care in America<br />
for over 20 years.  He formed the Center<br />
for Health Transformation and has written books about the present and future of<br />
health care and the insurance industry.<br />
His involvement in this issue is not just sound bite slogan driven<br />
baloney, like those of the other candidates.<br />
Newt has spoken at the Heritage Foundation and given speeches about this<br />
stuff long before he was even considering being a candidate in 2008, let alone<br />
2012.  This is a guy who thought about<br />
and struggled with the need of health care, and the ability to pay for it, for<br />
a very long time.</p>
<p>He claims he flirted with the issue of mandating health care<br />
as a way to sidetrack HillaryCare in the early 1990’s and more recently by<br />
thinking it might be better to have people post “health care bonds”.  The important point to take from here is that<br />
lots of ideas were being bandied about; lots of possibilities were being<br />
considered.  Don’t forget, Newt’s been<br />
involved with health care issues for a very long time, not just since he<br />
announced in 2011, like the others, or like in Mitt Romney’s case, actually<br />
signing into law the forerunner and template for ObamaCare, the single greatest<br />
destroyer of American government in history, and the plan which has already put<br />
Massachusetts in $4 billion in debt and cost over 28,000 jobs.</p>
<p>And listen more carefully to what Newt was saying about Paul<br />
Ryan’s Medicare proposal. His point was that the government, or more<br />
specifically the Republican Party, should not impose a change in Medicare<br />
without first explaining the details to the public and getting their acceptance<br />
before ramming it through.  Newt’s<br />
thinking is that a really big change requires first a really big<br />
discussion.  And that actually makes<br />
sense, no?</p>
<p>This is only a sampling of the most audacious “bad stuff”<br />
being used in an effort to knock Newt out of contention.  But you get the idea.  Most of it is bullcrap.  Some of it is purposely misconstrued stuff<br />
taken from a huge body of work stretching 20 years or more ago when the<br />
thinking on a particular issue was in its infancy but might be different now<br />
after the passage of time.  This is the<br />
price one pays when they’re in the forefront of public life for over 30 years<br />
and during times of great change and danger.</p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p>
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		<title>Violence on the left; equating the Tea Party with the Klan</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/09/10/violence-on-the-left-equating-the-tea-party-with-the-klan-4/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/09/10/violence-on-the-left-equating-the-tea-party-with-the-klan-4/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:55:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=533</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the last several months I&#8217;ve been purposely attempting to engage liberals to gain my own insight into their thinking about the seriously important matters that affect our nation and always end up shaking my head in frustration.  In one of my conversations with a liberal former colleague, this friend talks about how she could [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Over the last several months I&#8217;ve been purposely attempting<br />
to engage liberals to gain my own insight into their thinking about the<br />
seriously important matters that affect our nation and always end up shaking my<br />
head in frustration.  In one of my conversations<br />
with a liberal former colleague, this friend talks about how she could not<br />
possibly support Sarah Palin or the Tea Party movement because of their<br />
supposed religious beliefs.  This “religion<br />
thing” is her big issue.  I respond by<br />
suggesting the real danger to the nation might be found rather in Barack<br />
Obama’s policies, plans and directives and then proceed to itemize several and<br />
explain why they represent a menace to our civil society&#8230;and she ignores<br />
that, as if I had offered nothing.</p>
<p>And all liberals invariably do that.  It happens all the time.</p>
<p>Now here&#8217;s the thing.<br />
I don&#8217;t think my friend merely neglected to respond.  The problem is she can&#8217;t respond.  No liberal can.  It&#8217;s impossible.  The arguments I submitted to her, and to all<br />
liberals, can&#8217;t be broken.  To attempt to<br />
refute the facts I provided in response to her &#8220;Palin and tea party religion<br />
thing&#8221; would be like trying to say the sky is actually green.  It makes no sense.</p>
<p>This in a way brings me to the obviously deranged behavior<br />
of the many Democrat and liberal spokespeople, taking to the cameras and<br />
airwaves, over the past several weeks.  You<br />
know what I’m talking about.  Sitting Democrat<br />
Members of Congress referring to the Tea Party as terrorists and hostage takers<br />
and Nazi’s.  The sitting Vice President<br />
of the United States calling Tea Partiers terrorists and barbarians.  Members of the Congressional Black Caucus<br />
telling constituents that Tea Partiers want to see blacks hanging from trees or<br />
fighting to bring back Jim Crow, or hoping to return to the days of slavery.  You absolutely cannot make this stuff up.</p>
<p>Then you have the spectacle of the Maxine Waters, one of the<br />
most ethically challenged members of Congress, telling her supporters that Tea<br />
Partiers should go directly to hell, and that he’s going to help them get<br />
there, and the cheers and applause from the crowd that result from that affront<br />
is loud and clear.</p>
<p>And there’s much more and it goes on and on.  And it is now apparently the policy of the<br />
left to just let it all go, no holds barred, say whatever you like, let the violent<br />
rhetoric fly.  Wasn’t it just 8 months<br />
ago this past January, after Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s was shot, and<br />
others killed by an insane  gunman, that<br />
seemingly the entire world of the political left castigated and tormented the<br />
political right for their supposedly violent rhetoric.  If I recall, Sarah Palin was singled out for<br />
using innocuous bulls-eye targets on a map indicating congressional seats most<br />
vulnerable to be defeated by conservative candidates as the reason behind the<br />
violence.  We were supposed to believe<br />
that those targets were the instigation of actual mass murder, for crying out<br />
loud.</p>
<p>And then we heard the serene, almost reverential, voice of Barack<br />
Obama calling for calm in a troubled time. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztbJmXQDIGA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztbJmXQDIGA</a><br />
We all remember his plea for “civil discourse”, right?</p>
<p>Well, what has happened since January 12, 2011?</p>
<p>What happened was the collapse of everything liberal, of<br />
everything Democrat, of everything socialist, of everything Keynesian, of<br />
everything revered by those on the political left.</p>
<p>The nation is in economic and fiscal turmoil, having debt<br />
downgraded for the first time in our history, with unemployment at Great<br />
Depression levels, with manufacturing dead, with consumer confidence dead, with<br />
housing dead, with economic growth (at less than 1%) dead.  The price of gasoline and energy has more<br />
than doubled in just 2 years and the price of food is sky high forcing an<br />
incredible 1 in 6 Americans onto Food Stamps.<br />
Drilling in the Gulf has ceased, 10% of the nation’s electric energy<br />
production is scheduled to close down due to draconian EPA regulations, and the<br />
building of the critical oil pipeline from Canada to Texas has been forced to<br />
stop indefinitely.  Anyone paying even a<br />
modicum of attention can see for themselves that this president and these<br />
policies are literally bringing our country to its knees.  We can all see it.  Even those of us who are not political can<br />
see it.</p>
<p>At first the Democrats tried to portray the Tea Party as the<br />
dysfunctional enemy of the state, road blocking every attempt to resolve the<br />
nation’s economic and fiscal ills.  But<br />
the tide has continued to turn against the Democrats and the president, and<br />
because they have no plans, no policies, no solutions, no nothing, they need to<br />
get out in front another way.</p>
<p>And that “other way” is through violence.  Yes, real violence.</p>
<p>Just an hour prior to Barack Obama’s appearance before a<br />
crowd in Detroit on Sunday, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had an opportunity<br />
to speak, and gin up the crowd, and said the following:</p>
<p><em>“We got to<br />
keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it<br />
everywhere, it is the Tea Party.”</em></p>
<p><em>“President Obama, this is<br />
your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give<br />
America back to an America where we belong.”   </em></p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p>Barack Obama then took the stage…………and proceeded to say<br />
nothing about Hoffa’s remarks.  Not a<br />
thing.  The words spoken by Hoffa only<br />
moments before, and to the same exact crowd, could only be interpreted as a<br />
call to violence against Tea Partiers, yet Barack Obama said nothing.  And he has said nothing since.  And neither has anyone else in the political<br />
class of the political left.</p>
<p>So here’s the deal.<br />
We are in for serious trouble in this country.  Trouble not seen since the 1960’s and before.<br />
The strategy of the Democrats is the strategy of tyranny, of the totalitarian<br />
state, which is to victimize your supporters and stigmatize and demonize their<br />
supposed tormentors, and watch the violence begin.</p>
<p>It’s a strategy that has been used before.  It’s a strategy that works.  It’s what keeps Middle East dictators in<br />
power, what brought down Czarist Russia and China and other failed states.</p>
<p>We saw it recently in Wisconsin, we’ve seen it at Tea Party<br />
rallies across the nation, and we’ve seen it when the purple-shirted SEIU thugs<br />
have arrived on the scene.  And in the<br />
months ahead it’s going to get worse unless these freaks are called out.</p>
<p>Harry Reid, Dick Durban, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie<br />
Wasserman-Schultz and, of course, Barack Obama are all conspicuously<br />
silent.</p>
<p>They’re silent by design.<br />
They condone this.  They demand<br />
this.  This is their solution.  If they can just turn the Tea Party into the<br />
Ku Klux Klan there’s no telling where this can go.</p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p>
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		<title>Fast &amp; Furious……and right over the edge</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/07/30/fast-furious%e2%80%a6%e2%80%a6and-right-over-the-edge/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/07/30/fast-furious%e2%80%a6%e2%80%a6and-right-over-the-edge/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[budget]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[With all the coverage of the budget deficit and the debt ceiling it was easy to miss the report that came this week from the Commerce Department that indicated the nation’s growth in the last quarter was 1.3%. To put that into some perspective, it takes quarterly growth of at least 3% just to keep [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>With all the coverage of the budget deficit and the debt ceiling it was easy to miss the report that came this week from the Commerce Department that indicated the nation’s growth in the last quarter was 1.3%. To put that into some perspective, it takes quarterly growth of at least 3% just to keep up with the population of new workers coming of age and seeking employment. Essentially, 3% growth means being just even, treading water, just keeping up. It’s, for all practical purposes, no actual growth at all. It’s what an economy does when it’s standing in place, not moving forward or back. You get the idea.</p>
<p>If only our nation had 3% growth, what a lovely thing that would be. Instead we had 1.3% growth in the last quarter. But that’s not the worst news that was reported, news that no one really saw or cared about given the debt ceiling crisis and all that. No, the worst news was that the reported 1.9% growth of the previous quarter was actually incorrect. It turns out the actual real growth figure was 0.4% growth.</p>
<p>Now here’s the deal. The nation’s economy is dead in the water. We’re actually listing to the left. All this Obama and liberal and Democrat talk about an economic recovery, a recovery that’s underway but just not fast enough, and any other talk from Geithner or Schumer or Reid and the others about recovery is utter bullcrap. Not only is it a complete lie to say we’re in a recovery, but the ease with which these people lie reveals something very dark and sinister and troubling. It’s serial, it’s psychopathic. It just is.</p>
<p>If you believe those guys, or their media sycophants, you’re living on another planet. There’s no recovery at all. In fact, there may actually be a real live depression going on. Job growth is dead. Home buying is dead. Consumer spending is dead. With fully 25 million people either unemployed, or under-employed, what we have here is your classic stagnation, with stagflation not far behind.</p>
<p>This brings us to the debt ceiling and the farce that’s playing out for the entire world to see. It would be funny to watch if it weren’t so serious and the stakes so high. We have the Republicans on one side, furiously trying to put plan after plan, proposal after proposal on the record, hoping to get the Democrats to allow a vote up or down and then use that debate to formulate a policy every side can live with. My own opinion is that the Republicans should stop negotiating and let the August 2nd deadline come and see what happens, but that’s beside the point.</p>
<p>Since April, the House Republicans have actually passed, and made official and transparent, the Ryan budget, the Cut, Cap &amp; Balance proposal, and the Boehner plan. The Democrats have not even offered a budget, let alone passed one, as required by law, in almost 3 years!</p>
<p>On the other side we have the freaks of the left. You can’t describe them in any other way because to do so would lend them a sense of seriousness of which they do not deserve. They are not serious people, they are destroyers. For the past 7 months they have offered exactly nothing. They have not offered a plan or a policy. There is nothing specific on paper, there’s nothing written down for others to examine, they have provided no documentation. They just talk……and talk and talk.</p>
<p>Obama’s the best talker, a talker in the mold of Castro or Chavez, droning on and on, blaming everyone else, using his now almost daily national audience to stoke, the way a third-world dictator would, hate and loathing of the Republicans. Or if not Republicans one day, it’s hating the rich, the oil companies, insurance companies, or jet owners the next day. It’s about hating the “millionaires &amp; billionaires” (who are actually more likely to be a teacher and fireman married to each other and earning about $250,000 a year). It’s about hating the people on Wall Street. It’s about hating business or corporations. It’s about hating CEO’s or drug companies. But it’s always about hate.</p>
<p>Obama and his minions are very hateful people.</p>
<p>And so they offer nothing. Even after all the discussions and negotiations about spending cuts Jack Lew, Obama’s director of the budget, admitted that the Democrats had actually agreed to only $2 billion in discretionary spending cuts. That’s $2 billion; or 1/20th of 1% of the expected budget deficit for 1 year.<br />
But even that wasn’t written down anywhere.</p>
<p>And the Senate Democrats then refused to even debate the bills the House sent over for a vote. Not only did they not vote, 51 of them agreed not to even hear the specifics of the bill, to not even listen to what was proposed. The Democrats essentially put their hands over their mouths, eyes and ears and would not even admit that there was something physical sitting directly in front of them. They’re the ones proclaiming a calamity in the American economy if something isn’t done to raise the debt ceiling and they refuse to vote on or even discuss the Republican’s offer of a resolution. And literally no sooner do they refuse the Republican’s outright, but have the unmitigated chutzpah to appear before a national audience just moments later to say the Republicans are negotiating in bad faith. You can’t make this stuff up.</p>
<p>So what does all this mean? I don’t believe the Republicans are necessarily noble people. They clearly are politicians and have their own stuff. But they’re not anti-American. They don’t hate America. They don’t hate the people they are supposed to represent.</p>
<p>The Democrats, on the other hand, want to create an additional $10 trillion in budget deficits over the next 10 years to add to the $14 trillion in public debt already on the books. They have no problem raising taxes on those still lucky enough to be employed and will increase those taxes by 5% or 50%, they really don’t care. They don’t care that the nation’s accrued debt, by 2020, will be over $25 trillion. They don’t care that debt levels of that magnitude cannot be sustained. They don’t care that the civil society might collapse, that civil unrest could break out the way it has in Greece. They really don’t care.<br />
They don’t care that the economy is dead. They lie about it to convince you otherwise, but the facts tell the truth. And ObamaCare has not even hit the streets yet.</p>
<p>The Democrats are the party of Fast &amp; Furious. Like the reprehensible scandal that bemoans that name, people like Obama and Pelosi and Wasserman-Schultz and others don’t think things through; they have no interest in the consequences; they’re not concerned about how they impact on people’s lives. They refuse to take any blame, they refuse to be reflective of their actions, they refuse to be transparent, they refuse to take any responsibility.</p>
<p>When you take a moment and look at our country and the political class that is navigating our ship of state you realize something really scary. This present debate isn’t at all about America’s economy, or our debt or debt ceiling or any of that. This is about America and the kind of country we are and the kind of country we will become. This is about the future of America for us and our children.</p>
<p>This is an existential battle between two different and opposite ideologies. One ideology is good, even brilliant, if otherwise managed clumsily and often weakly. The other is evil and will bring down our once great society and culture, bringing menace and misery to everyone but the political class that adores it.<br />
I hate to say it, but the Democrats hate America and they hate Americans. They hate all of us. Their actions prove it.</p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p>
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		<title>Stupidity Masquerading as Intelligence</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/06/26/stupidity-masquerading-as-intelligence/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/06/26/stupidity-masquerading-as-intelligence/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:32:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[budget]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Political]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=519</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A friend of mine is very well traveled and has visited almost every continent as part of his job.  He likes to tell the story about a village he visited in Namibia in which the elders decided they needed to do something to put the huge number of local unemployed men to work.  It seems [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A friend of mine is very well traveled and has visited almost every continent as part of his job.  He likes to tell the story about a village he visited in Namibia in which the elders decided they needed to do something to put the huge number of local unemployed men to work. </p>
<p>It seems the village fresh water supply was at a well, about 5 miles from the village center, and each day the women-folk had to walk back and forth at least once with huge and obviously heavy buckets for their family’s daily water supply.  The elders decided they needed to drill a new well in the village center to make life so much easier for everyone, and so they contracted with a drilling company which arrived with a hydraulic drill to make the well happen.  But instead of using the hydraulic drill, the elders decided to have the company mount a huge wheel placed on its side, with each spoke of the wheel being about 100 feet in length, at the top of the drill hole.  The elders then had all the unemployed men in the village take positions along the spokes to turn the wheel manually, thereby turning the drill bit in the hole, sort of the way oxen might have been used in ancient times.  That was the elder’s way of creating jobs and lowering the village unemployment rate.</p>
<p> It seems Barack Obama has a lot in common with the village elders, tossing aside efficient and labor-saving technology in favor of a manual process that seems, at first glance, to employ more workers.  Unfortunately, Barack Obama is not an elder of a primitive African village but is rather the leader of the world’s foremost 21<sup>st</sup> Century engineering and technologically driven society.  His comment that ATMs are taking jobs from bank tellers, thereby causing unemployment to be high, reveals not only his archaic and disturbing way of thinking about job creation, but his complete lack of understanding of how technology creates more jobs than it eliminates though the process of “creative destruction”. </p>
<p>Yes, Mr. President, ATMs reduce the number of bank tellers required, but think of the enormous number of new workers it takes to build the ATMs, and maintain the ATMs, and service the ATMs, and develop new tasks a person can do at an ATM, and all the new companies and businesses that have been developed because of ATM technology.  ATMs now populate essentially every country on Earth and allow a person in one country to make a transaction in another country, a continent away, and automatically converts the money of one into that of the other and on and on.  Yes, the number of bank tellers is reduced, but imagine the number of new and higher paying jobs and wealth that have been created by the invention of ATMs, in precisely the same way humans benefitted from the automobile industry took over from the horse utilization industry, for crying out loud.</p>
<p>That’s just one example of creative destruction and the fact that the president of the United States, arguably the keeper of our economy, is so totally clueless about this process is shocking, absolutely stupefying, and jaw-dropping in its ignorance and frightening when you think of the impact that apparent dementia has on the rest of us.  It also underscores the danger our country faces with respect to the crushing official unemployment rate of over 9%, with the under-employment rate closer to 20% when the guy steering our ship of state is stupid.</p>
<p>If only that were the only example of incredible Obama and Democrat stupidity.   Unfortunately, it’s not. </p>
<p>Just this past week Senate Democrats, led by Charles Schumer of New York, said additional stimulus spending should be included in the discussions to raise the debt ceiling even as a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report shows the public debt of the United States will double, from its present obscene level of $14 trillion, to $28 trillion by 2035 if spending policies are not changed.  Amazingly enough, on the same day the CBO released a report detailing Obama’s stimulus spending had added almost $5 trillion in public debt in just 2 ½ years, Democrats were calling for more spending.  Are they freaking kidding?  You can’t make this stuff up.</p>
<p>Anyone recall the $830 billion stimulus ($1.2 trillion with interest included) of February 2009 and how that failed?  Anyone recall that the Federal Reserve has now far overtaken China as the largest buyer of American debt, meaning the Federal Reserve is literally and simply printing money and devaluing your dollars after 2 rounds of quantitative easing?</p>
<p>None of this spending is working and the economic numbers prove it, yet the Democrats are calling for even more spending.  How completely stupid is that?  Is it actually possible these people believe their own self-serving rhetoric, that we can spend ourselves to prosperity?  Or is there something more sinister and even evil afoot?   Think about that.</p>
<p>And how completely stupid is it for Barack Obama and the Democrats to continue to call for more and higher taxes as a way to resolve this budget disaster.  This is all about entitlement spending and nothing about taxes or revenue. </p>
<p>If you don’t believe me, take a look at this.  The expected budget deficit for this year will be $1.65 TRILLION.  Putting the higher “Clinton tax rates” into effect, just like Obama breathlessly wants to do so the so-called rich will be paying their so-called fair share, would raise only $80 billion a year.  Immediately terminating the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq would raise another $100 billion.  Immediately stripping, cutting and shredding defense spending by 20% (remembering that Obama’s own Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said just a 10% cut in defense spending would be “catastrophic”), thereby delegitimizing our defense posture to dangerous levels, would raise another $120 billion.  Eliminating all the oil industry deductions and subsidies would raise $20 billion (even though that money would be recouped by passing those costs onto the consumers at the gas pump).  Squeezing the itemized tax deductions of rich people, whoever they are, would raise another $20 billion.  All of those higher taxes and cuts to defense spending amounts to only $340 billion; but the deficit is $1.65 trillion. THE DEFICIT WOULD STILL BE OVER $1.3 TRILLION!  Do you see the problem here?</p>
<p>And the Obama deficits of the previous 2 years were $1.3 trillion and $1.4 trillion respectively.</p>
<p>No, the problem here is not raising taxes.  Taxes cannot be raised high enough on anyone or any group to significantly close the $1.65 trillion budget deficit gap.  The only way to do that is by cutting entitlement spending. </p>
<p>But here’s the problem.  The Democrat Party can not cut spending; they can not cut programs.  They will not cut anything, they can never cut anything. The reason is because to cut spending or programs is to cut government.  And the Democrat Party IS the government.  The government and the Democrat Party are one in the same.  <a href="http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/04/09/the-%e2%80%9cdemocrat-party%e2%80%9d-and-%e2%80%9cthe-government%e2%80%9d-are-one-in-the-same/">http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/04/09/the-%e2%80%9cdemocrat-party%e2%80%9d-and-%e2%80%9cthe-government%e2%80%9d-are-one-in-the-same/</a> </p>
<p>To cut spending is to make the government smaller, and to make the government smaller is for the Democrat Party to cede influence, and that’s never going to happen as long as Democrats control the White House and the Senate.  The Democrats unwillingness to do what’s good for the country is not only stupid, it’s dangerous.  And that’s a fact.</p>
<p>What we have here is a Marxist/liberal ideology that’s completely out of control.  It’s an ideology that resembles a mental illness or a cult religion.  Its purveyors only care about themselves and their power.  It’s tyranny.  And it’s logarithmically and galactically stupid.</p>
<p>It needs to be stopped.</p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p>
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		<title>Crack pot politics</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/06/12/crack-pot-politics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/06/12/crack-pot-politics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:29:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[budget]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=511</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some weeks ago Barack Obama visited the border in Texas and gave a speech about how his administration has done everything possible, everything the Republicans demanded, to close the border and reduce the number of illegal’s streaming into our country.  In fact, he said the border is safer now than ever before.  Of course, everything [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Some weeks ago Barack Obama visited the border in Texas and gave a speech about how his administration has done everything possible, everything the Republicans demanded, to close the border and reduce the number of illegal’s streaming into our country.  In fact, he said the border is safer now than ever before.  Of course, everything Obama said was a factual and documented lie.  But a long time friend of mine of almost 50 years, a liberal from NYC, told me the reports of Barack Obama lying were just “crack pot politics”.</p>
<p>I mean, everything BHO said was a lie.  He said the wall was virtually completed; instead there are over 1900 miles of border and only 350 miles of fence has been built, and only about half of that was built to the correct standards.  Not even close.  BHO claimed 31% more drugs and 64% more guns were seized then before, yet the number of people crossing the border is down 40%.  Hmmm, very interesting; seizures of drugs and guns go up, yet seizures of people go down. Up or down, it matters not. Whatever the numbers, Obama vindicates himself.</p>
<p>He tells us that the country is creating more jobs, when it&#8217;s not. He tells us he has either “saved or created” 2 million jobs since he’s been president, but will not provide the data or formula by which those numbers were derived.  He tells us that the country is bouncing back economically or that ObamaCare is good for the citizens, when it&#8217;s not.  Everything he says is an actual lie.  But to the liberal, drawing attention to those lies is just crack pot politics.</p>
<p>Obama and his record should be the basis for what the 2012 presidential election is about, and the Democrats will do everything they can to not talk about the present, to not talk about the Obama record.  The truth is that the GOP nominee, no matter who that is, should have a field day beating the person who is essentially the dumbest and least capable of all the candidates running in 2012, Barack Hussein Obama.</p>
<p>So before we forget about the present, let’s review where we presently stand after just 2 ½ years of Barack Obama’s presidency.</p>
<ul>
<li>The number of people on Food Stamps has increased by 40% to the highest number of beneficiaries in the nation’s history. </li>
<li>The price of gasoline has increased by 75% to the highest in the nation’s history.</li>
<li>The 33% of average home equity loss in the last 2 years is higher than that of the 31% suffered during the Great Depression.  Home prices are now at 2002 levels, wiping out 10 years of increased equity and personal wealth.  In fact, home foreclosures, recently at record levels, continue at very high and unacceptable rates.</li>
<li>Two nationally recognized credit agencies are about to downgrade America’s bond rating to below triple-A  because of a $14 trillion debt that the Obama administration has done everything it can to avoid dealing with in an honest and responsible fashion and has taken absolutely no action to address other than to require higher taxes on the so-called rich.  By the way, even if taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” (who are really people grossing just $250,000 and are not millionaires or billionaires at all) are eventually taxed at the “Clinton tax levels” the additional revenue generated would amount to only $80 billion.  With a budget deficit this coming year alone of an expected $1.65 trillion, you can see the issue of taxing the “rich” to get out of our budget disaster is a complete red-herring, a canard, a lie, bullcrap.  You get the idea.</li>
<li>Manufacturing in America has slacked off to its lowest level since September 2009, no matter what Obama recently said about the 2 government auto companies, which could only be showing progress due to GM and Chrysler both being relieved of their tax burdens to the tune of $47 billion and $7 billion respectively.  Only a government and union owned company could possibly get a deal like that.</li>
<li>By a 3 to 2 vote (the 3 being Obama appointed union lawyers and hacks) the National Labor Relations Board is attempting to stop the Boeing Corporation from opening a manufacturing plant in South Carolina because that state is a “right to work” state.  Boeing’s only other alternative would be to take those 1,000 jobs overseas.</li>
<li>The official unemployment rate is presently 9.1% and the GAO now reports that, using present government economic policies, it is likely to remain at that “European level” until at least the year 2020.  And that doesn’t even factor in the “under-employment” rate, including folks either working only part-time but want to work more or who have simply dropped out of the labor market altogether, which is closer to 20%, a number last seen during the Great Depression.</li>
<li>Over 51% of the working age population pays no federal personal income tax, depending rather on the largesse provided by the remaining 49%, of which the top 1% pays 40% of the taxes and the top 10% pay over 70% of all federal personal income taxes.</li>
<li>Because of the instability in the American economy, China no longer wants to buy our debt.  They figure holding $1 trillion is clearly as high as they want to go.  In fact, they’re trying to off-load some of the debt they hold.  Instead, the biggest buyer of American debt, which is required to fuel the operation of our government to the tune of 40 cents for every dollar spent, is the Federal Reserve.  Through their “quantitative easing” policies they have bought over 70% of all US debt, which effectively means they are simply printing fiat money, backed by nothing, to flood the economy.  The approximate $1 trillion recently printed through QE1 and QE2 is apparently not even enough since talk of a QE3, to print additional hundreds of billions, is already underway in the halls of the Treasury and Federal Reserve.  What are the repercussions of a government printing paper money to borrow from itself?  Remember Weimar Germany?  How about present day Zimbabwe?</li>
<li>The Obama EPA has imposed such strong anti-coal policy that 5 coal-fired power plants in the Midwest have decided to shut down rather than make needless modifications that would cost literally billions to effectuate.  Interesting that the lifeblood of a technological society is cheap and abundant energy, which America has much of, yet the Obama administration is doing everything it can to halt production, force prices higher and make stockpiles scarce, even to the point of lending money we borrowed from China to Brazil and Columbia for them to develop their own energy resources instead of us developing ours.  Using exactly what kind of demented calculus do you use to believe that policy is good for America?</li>
</ul>
<p>And there’s so much more.  And that doesn’t even include the destruction of liberty and subversion of the Constitution that we know of as ObamaCare.  And that doesn’t even include a foreign policy from Mars.</p>
<p>But isn’t there any good news?  BHO must have done something good, no?</p>
<p>Well, the limousine industry in America is doing well since the number of such government vehicles has effectively increased 100% since Obama has been president.  Now that says a lot, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Oh, and if you’re a politically well connected crony-capitalist company or someone with friends high in the Democrat Party (for example, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid) or a public employee union, you could get a waiver from ObamaCare that will shield you from the costs and risks that the rest of the population may have to endure.  Of the over 1300 ObamaCare waivers already granted, over half the effected workers belong to public employee or other favored union even though less than 12% of the population are union members.  If that doesn’t show the corruption that will ensue if this law is either not repealed or defeated in the courts, nothing will.</p>
<p>This is what happens when you take the best society and culture in the world and attempt to replace it with something else, as Obama said, to “fundamentally change America.”  You know, “fundamentally change America” into something different, foreign and alien.  But why would you want to “fundamentally” change something that you love, anyway?  The answer is you don’t. </p>
<p>You only “fundamentally” change something you hate.  That’s why you “fundamentally” want to change it.  That says a lot about Barack Obama, no?  And isn’t attempting to fundamentally change America into something else really the definition of “crack pot politics”?</p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p>
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		<title>Palin kick-starts bus tour on back of motorcycle</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/05/30/palin-kick-starts-bus-tour-on-back-of-motorcycle/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/05/30/palin-kick-starts-bus-tour-on-back-of-motorcycle/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 May 2011 19:48:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Palin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Political]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=509</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why would Sarah Palin be doing a bus tour if she were NOT planning on running? With GOPers either dropping out or not yet living up to expectations, it&#8217;s likely Sarah &#8220;Barracuda&#8221; will get in the race. That&#8217;ll be a relief. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110529/ap_on_el_ge/us_palin]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Why would Sarah Palin be doing a bus tour if she were NOT planning on running? With GOPers either dropping out or not yet living up to expectations, it&#8217;s likely Sarah &#8220;Barracuda&#8221; will get in the race. That&#8217;ll be a relief.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110529/ap_on_el_ge/us_palin">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110529/ap_on_el_ge/us_palin</a></p>
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		<title>He may have been born in America, but he ain’t no American</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/05/06/he-may-have-been-born-in-america-but-he-ain%e2%80%99t-no-american/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/05/06/he-may-have-been-born-in-america-but-he-ain%e2%80%99t-no-american/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 May 2011 12:33:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=507</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Did you know that over 14,000 oil wells were drilled in the Gulf of Mexico before the Deep Water Horizon well exploded 13 months ago?  That was one spill in over 14,000, spanning a 40 year blemish-free period.  Yet the government – defined as Barack Hussein Obama and his administration (BHOAHA) – decided to shut down virtually [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Did you know that over 14,000 oil wells were drilled in the Gulf of Mexico before the Deep Water Horizon well exploded 13 months ago?  That was one spill in over 14,000, spanning a 40 year blemish-free period.  Yet the government – defined as Barack Hussein Obama and his administration (BHOAHA) – decided to shut down virtually the entire oil drilling industry.  In the gulf, this shut down was done over the objections of a federal court order. </p>
<p>At about the same time, BHOAHA effectively shut down the oil drilling industry off both of America’s coasts.  It even shut down drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska, claiming the need to review the potential for environmental impact.  In the case of Alaska, over $4 billion had been recently invested and another $2.2 billion paid to the government in oil drilling leases.  Even so, the EPA shot down the drilling effort claiming “air quality issues” to the people living in that most northern of regions. </p>
<p>North Dakota has one of the largest oil reserves in the world.  Nevertheless, BHOAHA’s EPA recently shut down the building of a pipeline from the North Dakota shale oil fields to Texas.  The new pipeline was to connect with an existing pipeline complex that efficiently and quickly moves oil to different areas of the country at low cost. </p>
<p>BHOAHA also has actively aided and encouraged the oil drilling and exploration industries in Brazil and Columbia, and has told those countries that America will be their best customers.  This is rather than drilling and developing our own resources and having Brazil and Columbia become customers of America.  It’s all ass-backwards, no?</p>
<p>Is there any wonder why gasoline prices have soared in the past year, actually more than doubling in just the time Barack Obama has been president?  You still believe it’s “the speculators” that are forcing the price of gasoline to rise?</p>
<p>Only last month the price of gasoline first broke the dreaded $4.00 per gallon barrier in most parts of the country with nary a peep from the main-stream media and “progressive” consumer organizations.  This is the opposite of the summer of 2007, when the price last reached that level and the media outrage at the time made it seem the world was coming to an end.  Now it’s moving with speed toward $5.00 and threatens everywhere to reach $6.00 by the end of the summer driving season.  All the while, the media seems to be protecting BHOAHA. </p>
<p>Clearly BHOAHA wants to proactively manipulate and interfere with the laws of supply and demand.  But why?  What’s going on? </p>
<p>If you think this purposeful manipulation and inference is just crazy talk you need to listen to Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu.  As early as December 2008, before Obama was sworn in, Chu told the Wall Street Journal &#8220;somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.&#8221;  That would, by the way, be in the $7.00 to $9.00 range.  He then went on to describe ways that the government could encourage people to buy more fuel efficient cars and even coax them into living closer to their work.</p>
<p>And what about Obama’s own words from January 2008 when he told the San Francisco Chronicle that under his administration the price of electricity “would necessarily skyrocket” and he “will bankrupt the coal industry”. </p>
<p>The policies of his government, and the Democrats in general, would seem to be bringing his words and those of his lieutenants to fruition.  He meant it when he said it.  It wasn’t just rhetoric for campaign purposes.  Where exactly in the Constitution does it say the government should be considering issues like this?  How about planning policies that aim to change not only consumer behavior but social and personal behavior as well?  Where does it say in the Constitution that government should be acting to drive costs and choosing which industries are winners (“green energy”) and losers (“fossil fuels”)? </p>
<p>Of course BHOAHA, like every other “class-warfare, envy-pushing, hate-the-so-called-rich Marxist”, is now trying to blame the oil companies for price gouging and making too much profit.  Like that’s the government’s business anyway? </p>
<p>So let’s first put some perspective on this.  Did you know that even with the price of oil presently at over $111 per barrel, the large American oil companies make only 2 cents per gallon of gasoline in profit while local, state, and federal excise taxes amount to about 50 cents per gallon?  In other words, the government takes about 25 times per gallon what the oil companies themselves get to keep.  That’s just what the mob would do. </p>
<p>Did you know that the American oil industry pays more in federal incomes taxes than the bottom 75% of all American taxpayers; in fact, the American oil industry is the second highest payer of all income taxes in America after personal incomes taxes?  Did you know that the average profit of American oil companies is less than 6%, less than drugs, computers, electronics, clothes, beverages, virtually everything manufactured and most other industries?  (Incidentally, did you know the health insurance industry runs just a 3% profit, among the lowest of all industries in America?  This is despite being labeled by BHOAHA as wealthy blood-suckers and Medicare rejecting about 7% of all claims, while private insurance rejects less than 2% of all claims.  But that’s an argument for another time.)</p>
<p>Did you know that no American oil company controls more than ½ of 1% of the world’s oil production volume?  It’s the state-owned companies in the Middle East and OPEC and others that set the price of a barrel of oil, not Exxon-Mobil, for crying out loud.</p>
<p>Did you know that the so-called $4 billion in “oil industry subsidies” BHOAHA is looking to terminate are the same exact subsidies provided to all other industries that also get to depreciate equipment and take other business related losses according to the tax code?  Not only do oil companies get nothing special, but that $4 billion will be appear at the gas pump for consumers to pay.  (Incidentally, did you know that General Motors, BHOAHA’s car company, was relieved of paying over $48 billion in future income taxes and that General Electric – BHOAHA’s favorite CEO friend – paid zero income taxes last year?  But that’s also an argument for another time).</p>
<p>Now I’m not crying for the oil companies, but the fossil fuels they provide, until recently at low cost, are what allows the American economy and standard of living to be the best in the world.  This applies even to our poorest people.  Even poor people in America can drive across the country and eat cheap food brought to market by cheap fuel.  But that can change and that’s just a fact. </p>
<p>So why the purposeful sabotage of America’s energy industry by BHOAHA?  Why would the President of the United States purposely want to starve the country of low cost energy, thereby making virtually every product and service in America more expensive, increasing the price of food and forcing companies’ overseas and taking millions of jobs with them? </p>
<p>Everything Barack Obama is doing with relation to energy is completely wrong and completely counter to free market and capitalist principles.  And he’s doing it on purpose.  But why?</p>
<p>The answer is because Barack Obama is a Marxist.  What Marxists do is destroy the economy so that the “Middle Class”, the one Barack Obama professes he’s trying to save, is actually destroyed.  I’m sorry to say this, but what we have is an American version of Castro or Hugo Chavez running the American government, and thereby ruining the American economy, and purposely running it into the ground.  He may have been born in Hawaii, but he ain’t no American.</p>
<p>By purposely increasing the price of energy, he destroys jobs.  By purposely increasing the cost of energy he increases the price of food and all other staples of life in America.  By calling for the elimination of fossil fuels in exchange for unproven and unreliable “green energy” he purposely creates chaos and rationing of energy, resulting in brown outs, black outs and the ultimate destruction of the civil society in this country.  By forcing you to live closer to where you work he destroys your freedom and mobility, and makes you easier to control.</p>
<p>By doing these things BHOAHA is deliberately diminishing America’s presence, standing and leadership in the world.  He is fundamentally changing our country into an alien nation. </p>
<p>By doing all these things he makes everyone into a victim needing to be saved by the government.  And that makes the government, the same government BHOAHA wants to take over the health care industry, really, really, really powerful. </p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p>
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		<title>The “Democrat Party” and “the Government” are one in the same</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/04/09/the-%e2%80%9cdemocrat-party%e2%80%9d-and-%e2%80%9cthe-government%e2%80%9d-are-one-in-the-same/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/04/09/the-%e2%80%9cdemocrat-party%e2%80%9d-and-%e2%80%9cthe-government%e2%80%9d-are-one-in-the-same/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 10 Apr 2011 04:15:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[budget]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[capitalism]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Political]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=503</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why do Democrat controlled legislatures throughout the nation consistently do the wrong thing virtually every time when it’s so easy to just do the right thing instead?  Why do Democrats virtually always vote to raise spending when common sense and good fiscal stewardship say cutting spending is the right policy?  Why do they raise taxes [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Why do Democrat controlled legislatures throughout the nation consistently do the wrong thing virtually every time when it’s so easy to just do the right thing instead? </p>
<p>Why do Democrats virtually always vote to raise spending when common sense and good fiscal stewardship say cutting spending is the right policy?  Why do they raise taxes when taxes should be cut?  Why do they always promote policies which take money away from producers instead of keeping money in the private economy, which has time after time proven to be the best policy for everyone?  I could go on and on, but you get the point.</p>
<p>So why do Democrats almost always choose the wrong path instead of always choosing the right path? </p>
<p>There’s something at play here that actually explains why we can count on Democrats to do the wrong thing, something that’s sort of the missing piece to the puzzle.  And here it is; the government is the Democrat Party and the Democrat Party is the government.  They are, in fact, one in the same.  That’s not an exaggeration or hyperbole; that’s for real. </p>
<p>Take a moment to think about it instead of rejecting that notion out of hand.</p>
<p>That explains why Democrats always want to make the government bigger, more powerful, more intrusive, and more encompassing; it’s in their best interest to do that because they are the government.  Like an entrepreneur wants to grow his/her business because that’s in their best interest, Democrats want to grow government because it’s in their best interest. </p>
<p>Entrepreneurs grow their businesses because they own them; Democrats grow government because they own it.  The Democrats <span style="text-decoration: underline;">ARE</span> the government.</p>
<p>In effect, there are Republicans; and then there is the government.  For the convenience of voters, the government calls itself the Democrat Party; but when you vote for a Democrat, you’re voting for the government.</p>
<p>That’s the case whether people are voting for Democrats in a local election, a state election or in a national election.  It makes no difference. The word “Democrat” now means “government.”  They’re synonymous.</p>
<p>Now it all makes sense, right?</p>
<p>Once you have that perspective, you can understand why Democrats would force a potential government shutdown over what amounts to literally mere pennies, or why there will be a death struggle by Democrats to raise the debt ceiling to over $15 trillion or more, or why there will be a savage fight, with Democrats hurling disgusting incriminations before they are forced to accept any of Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal that cuts into the very fabric, the entitlements, of big government. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Democrats can’t give in to even the most minor of these cuts because to do so, in some fashion, reduces the government, which really reduces the Democrat Party.  The Democrats will never stand for such an onslaught on big government because an attack on big government is an attack on the Democrat Party.</p>
<p>Just look at the logic of Democrats in the showdown just ended Friday night in which even the most ridiculous federal funding could not, would not, be cut.  Where in the Constitution does it say that I must fund Planned Parenthood or the National Endowment for the Arts, or National Public Radio?  Where does it say that?  But to listen to Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer you’d think there was an enumerated power in the Constitution forcing me to do exactly that (<a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/schumer-cuts-planned-parenthood-never-ne">http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/schumer-cuts-planned-parenthood-never-ne</a> ). </p>
<p>Harry Reid says that funding Planned Parenthood is more important than funding the military.  Can you believe that?  Comparing Planned Parenthood to military warriors taking gunfire?  How contemptible is that?  To Democrats, the military and national defense are relatively inconsequential matters of little importance.  They&#8217;re little more than welfare recipients.  In fact, Democrats would sooner fund abortion doctors than our military warriors in the field and in harm’s way.  If there had been a shutdown, the Democrats plan was to make sure people on welfare got their checks, but not the warriors keeping our country safe. (<a href="http://biggovernment.com/mikeflynn/2011/04/07/obama-ill-shut-down-the-government-and-suspend-military-pay/">http://biggovernment.com/mikeflynn/2011/04/07/obama-ill-shut-down-the-government-and-suspend-military-pay/</a> ).  Screwing the families who have sacrificed the most, by sending warriors to defend our liberty, freedom and national interest, is less important than sending money to NPR, the partisan propaganda arm of the government, aka Democrat Party.  It’s just contemptible.</p>
<p>Look at the horrific language Democrats are using at this exact moment to characterize Republicans who are looking to make mostly modest and symbolic cuts.  Reminds you of Wisconsin, no?  Immediately, Democrats pull out “human shields” to try to keep Republicans from landing any punches or doing any damage, in pretty much the same fashion as the barbarians in the Middle East might use human shields when they are put under attack.</p>
<p>The “human shields” the Democrats favor are statements like Nancy Pelosi stating Republican budget cuts will force seniors literally into starvation (<a href="http://nation.foxnews.com/nancy-pelosi/2011/04/05/pelosi-republican-budget-will-force-seniors-starvation">http://nation.foxnews.com/nancy-pelosi/2011/04/05/pelosi-republican-budget-will-force-seniors-starvation</a> ).</p>
<p>Or Harry Reid saying Republicans don’t want women to get breast cancer screenings (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/08/usa-budget-health-idUSWEN079220110408">http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/08/usa-budget-health-idUSWEN079220110408</a>.</p>
<p>Or Congresswoman Louise Slaughter saying Republicans want to kill women (<a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/house-freshmen-came-washington-intent-ki">http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/house-freshmen-came-washington-intent-ki</a> ).  </p>
<p>Or Congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton saying Republican budget cuts are the equivalent of bombing civilians (<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20051805-503544.html">http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20051805-503544.html</a> ), and on and on. </p>
<p>The Democrat strategy is to claim Republicans hate children, want old people to just die, don’t want anyone to get an education, favor polluting the air and water, hate poor people, hate blacks, hate Hispanics, hate gays, and on and on, pulling out human shield in front of human shield in an effort to obfuscate, disguise, confuse, conceal, and divert any criticism so as not to land a blow against the need to spend more money by the government.</p>
<p>This Democrat strategy is so evil it’s actually pathological.  Here’s the Democrat president, Barack Obama, just about 4 weeks ago proposing his 2012 budget.  In spite of our nation’s near fiscal collapse, yearly trillion dollar deficits every year of this entire new decade, the potential to actually triple our national debt from its present $14 trillion, the unsustainably of the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security entitlements, he adds another $1.5 trillion of new spending and a host of new taxes that will only limit the ability of the private sector to grow the economy.  His 2012 budget plan is a total budgetary disaster. </p>
<p>Now, he’s supposed to be a smart guy.  So why does he want to do this?</p>
<p>He does it, and the Democrats approve of it, because forcing the debt to run even higher will force, absolutely force, taxes to be raised.  And if taxes are raised to a high enough level, businesses will almost certainly have to fail or move out of the country.  That leaves the American citizens without jobs and no means of support.  And that puts them on the government dole; thereby growing the government to its ultimate size, the size where it takes control of everything, your health, your wealth, simply everything. </p>
<p>And that’s really the purpose of the modern Democrat Party; that’s the purpose of big government; to control everyone and everything.</p>
<p>It’s all laid out in detail in “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinski, Barack Obama’s mentor.</p>
<p>The Democrat Party and the government are one in the same.  We’ve seen this pathology before, albeit on different continents.</p>
<p>Am I wrong?</p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p>
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		<title>An anatomy of tyranny</title>
		<link>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/04/02/an-anatomy-of-tyranny/</link>
		<comments>http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/04/02/an-anatomy-of-tyranny/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 02 Apr 2011 21:49:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Political]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.joelsrant.com/?p=500</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Under the radar screen of most of us, the battle between the forces of good vs. evil continues unabated, and those with truly dark intentions seem always to be winning.  We are in a war for our country, and yet things are seemingly so quiet. Take the news from Wisconsin.  Here’s the quintessential model of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Under the radar screen of most of us, the battle between the forces of good vs. evil continues unabated, and those with truly dark intentions seem always to be winning.  We are in a war for our country, and yet things are seemingly so quiet.</p>
<p>Take the news from Wisconsin.  Here’s the quintessential model of what tyranny looks like. </p>
<p>A new Republican governor is elected with 52% of the popular vote in November 2010, taking control from the Democrats who had held that position for the 8 previous years.  In addition, both the Wisconsin House and Senate also flipped control to the Republicans.  Clearly, a majority of the electorate decided a change in state government was needed and put in place those who had promised to make those exact changes, which included a well debated and discussed effort to restrict the power of public employee unions.  Republicans won in a blue state; Democrats could not believe they had actually lost.  Hell hath no fury like a Democrat scorned!</p>
<p>Losing an honest election does not deter Democrats (e.g., see Al Franken election in Minnesota in 2008, Christine Gregoire in Washington in 2004, Robert Torricelli in New Jersey in 2002 to name just a few), and this is where the tyranny plot thickens.  As soon as the “budget repair bill” was introduced in the Wisconsin legislature, the Democrats left the state in order to prevent Republicans from having the quorum they needed to pass the bill.  Only Democrats could think of something as underhanded and un-American as that.</p>
<p>Public employee unions called upon their members to protest in Madison, to literally take control of the capitol building, and while doing so making sure they could do the most physical damage as possible.  Hateful banners, of the kind that just weeks before were castigated as encouraging assault in Tucson by these very people, appeared including shouts and chants tinged with violence.  And don’t forget the death threats aimed at Republican legislators.  All of this was done by public employees in an effort to intimidate and coerce Republican legislators from their mission.</p>
<p>Thousands of additional protestors, aka SEIU thugs, were bused in from other states, all with funding and support provided by the Democratic National Committee and Barack Obama’s own campaign organization, “Organizing for America”. </p>
<p>Think about the enormity of that for just one moment.  The President of the United States, the presumptive leader of ALL the American people, has a bonafide organization that he can call upon to support one side, and against the other side, in a state political procedure.  That is completely anathema to the history and tradition of the office of the president.  But in Barack Obama’s mind, history and tradition begins with him.  Nothing, to him, ever happened before he became president.  He honestly believes that.</p>
<p>But we’re not done.  On two separate occasions, Republican legislators met with Democrats, hiding in Illinois, to negotiate a compromise to this stalemate.  Both times Democrats agreed to come back to Wisconsin, and both times reneged at the last moment, and both times the media accounts purposely make it seem the Republicans were the one’s not negotiating in good faith. </p>
<p>By this time the collusion of public employee unions, Democrat political leaders including the President of the United States, and the state-run liberal media is having a detrimental influence.  Governor Scott Walker’s poll numbers begin to fall. </p>
<p>In an effort to break the stalemate, the Legislative Council (LC) and the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB), both legal agencies and employees of Wisconsin, determined that aspects of the budget repair bill could be separated out, allowing the Republicans to pass their bill without any Democrat involvement.  It’s important to understand that these agencies, the LC and the LRB, are the same people who just weeks before advised and counseled the Democrats when they were in charge.  These are not political appointees, nor are they affiliated with a political party.  They are, essentially, nonpartisan.</p>
<p>Armed with that information, the Governor and Republicans voted to pass the bill stripping the public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights (but not including bargaining for wages).  And there you have it; the duly elected authority of a sovereign state taking action to pass a law that affects only their own state.  It’s just what the Founders had in mind.  Case closed!</p>
<p>Actually, no, the case is not closed. </p>
<p>Once the Democrats realized the bill had been passed they filed a lawsuit claiming the Republicans had not afforded them time to respond to the call for a vote.  The fact that the state parliamentarian, literally the state’s official expert on procedural expediencies like this and an employee of the state rather than a political party, indicated that the correct process had been followed had in no way tempered the wrath of the Democrats.  As usual, history, experience, tradition and facts mean nothing to Democrats.  Only power, and who’s wielding that power, means something to the Democrat mind. That’s a very dangerous way of thinking, but it is what it is.</p>
<p>In fact the Democrats, through their allies in the state run liberal media, went on a binge, accusing Republicans of “violating state law”, “making a mockery of democracy” and “operating like a banana republic” and in performing a “coup d’état”.  The irony of Democrats hiding out in another state, in a deceitful and shameful effort to prevent a newly inaugurated senate from holding a vote on vital state business, seems to have no impact or effect on this group of devious, deceitful and hostile Americans.</p>
<p>Instead, Democrats went the route of all good Marxists and found safety and comfort through the court, in the personage of Judge Maryann Sumi of Dane County, who issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the new law from going into effect.</p>
<p>This is where malicious collusion and contemptible behavior crosses over the line into soft tyranny.</p>
<p>Enter Maryann Sumi, the same judge who astoundingly refused to order the striking teachers back to work in February (<a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_1a2a34ce-3baf-11e0-983c-001cc4c03286.html">http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/local_schools/article_1a2a34ce-3baf-11e0-983c-001cc4c03286.html</a> ). </p>
<p>This is the same Maryann Sumi whose son is a political operative, who also happens to be a former lead field manager with the AFL-CIO and data manager for the SEIU State Council.  In fact, Jacob Sinderbrand, Sumi’s son, runs a company called <a href="http://www.leftfieldstrategies.com/">Left Field Strategies</a>. </p>
<p>It seems that both Judge Maryann Sumi and her son are hack political activists and her obvious conflict should cause her to recues herself.  Ah, but no, that’s not how Democrats work, not when tyranny is afoot.  Don’t forget, Democrats believe the ends justify the means, which means in this case, twist or spin or break any law or process necessary to get this budget repair law overturned. </p>
<p>In fact, it seems Judge Maryann Sumi cavalierly chose to ignore the budget repair bill law and, since she knew there were no merits to the case, instead decided to argue procedure.  In effect, she completely disregarded the guidelines regarding TRO’s, overruling each of the four elements a plaintiff, in this case the Democrats, must prove:  (1) likelihood of success on the merits; (2) irreparable harm, absent the order; (3) that less harm will result to the defendant if the TRO issues than to the plaintiffs if the TRO does not issue; and (4) that the public interest, if any, weighs in favor of plaintiff. If the balance of hardships tips in favor of plaintiff, then the plaintiff must only raise &#8220;questions going to the merits so serious, substantial, difficult and doubtful, as to make them fair ground for litigation and thus for more deliberative investigation.&#8221;</p>
<p>All four of these elements must be proven, not just one or two.  All four.  And yet, none of them rises to level the law requires.  This means that Judge Maryann Sumi is a liar and a political hack.  She’s using her position to provide cover for the Democrats and their union overseers.  Maryann Sumi is like having the Manchurian Candidate on the bench; and the Democrats are worse.</p>
<p>So now the process moves forward to a court hearing which will now waste time and block the effectuation of a law properly passed by those Republicans empowered by the people of the state. <a href="http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/118298099.html?blog=y">http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/118298099.html?blog=y</a></p>
<p>Does this represent tyranny?  Here’s a case in which the court takes a political position to act on behalf of a Democrat group looking for a political favor.  It doesn’t get more tyrannical than that.  Would you want to be in front of this court battling, say, for your life or liberty?  What are the chances you would get a fair shake from Judge Maryann Sumi?  What are the chances this judge will look only to the merits of the case and not to some other agenda?  You can draw your own conclusions.</p>
<p>And now it seems, while this TRO is winding its way to some end, the miscreants and thugs who make up the public employee unions in Wisconsin have taken their war to the streets.  In fact, they are literally shaking down private businesses in Madison by “asking” owners to place signs in their windows saying they support the unions……or face a boycott.  <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/118963234.html">http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/118963234.html</a></p>
<p>Can you believe this?  Can you believe these unions?  Can you believe these Democrats?</p>
<p>What happens in Wisconsin will affect every American because tyranny has no borders.</p>
<p>And that’s all there is to it.</p>
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